


variations on the death of a catalan fisherman

by jockohomo



Category: Le Comte de Monte-Cristo | Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
Genre: Angst, EXTREMELY fernand-centric, Gen, Hallucinations, POV Third Person, Suicide, Unreliable Narrator, but like not the sympathetic kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:41:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26846044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jockohomo/pseuds/jockohomo
Summary: Fernand, the moments before his death, and the infinities that he spends within.
Kudos: 3





	variations on the death of a catalan fisherman

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teethrotter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teethrotter/gifts).



> this is a birthday fic for my bf dallas! he wanted me to write about fernand's death and i sure did my best. fernand isn't one of my personal favorites and it's been a while since i read the book, so apologies if this isn't perfect. i did my best.
> 
> VERY heavy content warning for suicide and everything that comes with it, via gunshot, drowning, and stabbing. there is also some discussion of slavery regarding the child haydee, a bit of unsanitary stuff, and brief allusions to animal death (mainly via metaphor, no actual animals die in this fic). please tread with caution!

_“This is no longer our home.”_

It seemed impossible that the broken estate could ever have been anyone’s home. Marks of the living remained engraved in every length of it—a book left open on the table in the sitting room, the faded aroma of spices he couldn’t name drifting in from doors away, curtains pulled back for light to spill in through the windows—the same way a quarry’s tracks remained on the forest floor even after it had been shot dead. It would have felt different five years ago, as it would have before Monte Cristo appeared in Paris, as it would have that very morning. Now it felt dead, because Morcerf knew it was. All the life had left this place with his family.

Morcerf was dead, too, if he had ever existed in the first place. Fernand Mondego was not, but it was growing harder and harder to tell. 

His hand, trembling and pale as if in the throes of illness, grasped at the railing of the staircase. Unsteadily, he began his ascent to the inferno. 

His eyes locked together with Edmond’s the moment he was escorted out the door. Fernand thought they did, at least, for a moment—surely it wasn’t true, surely Edmond would never have thought to look in his direction. Fernand did see his expression, though, the confusion and anxiety there, and he drank it like wine until his own worry had drowned in it, had evaporated like vapor off the sea. Despite his assurances otherwise, Dantès would be gone for some time. An eternity, perhaps—Fernand hoped it would be an eternity. It would be enough time, either way, for his purposes, and that thought was enough to make him senseless with relief. The joy was enough to make him numb.

There was a great shadow in the space that Edmond had occupied, suddenly, and Fernand found his gaze drawn to it. Were those eyes glinting from the darkness? Were those teeth?—He could not tell, but he was sure he could hear laughing. It was painfully clear to him, in that moment, that the whole thing was a farce. His rival in love (if it was fair to even raise himself to such a level) would not stay contained forever, and he certainly would not die. He would return. He would claim victory, except Fernand would lose far more than if he had merely conceded, if he had discarded the note, if he had left it where it had been thrown. 

Years of family and reputation, only for it all to be yanked out from under him. Was there any point to gaining it only to lose it so suddenly? Was there any point to carrying on like this? There was not—Fernand knew that much. 

He remembered the betrothal feast, buried in the garden like a bastard child, and found himself gripping the handle of a fork. Had he been holding it before? He did not know. He did not know how long he had been standing in this room. 

Fernand plunged the fork into his neck until the prongs poked through his esophagus. Could he breathe? Was he bleeding? He could not tell, but he knew that it hurt. He dislodged the fork in a single, mechanical motion, and then back into his throat, again and again and again. 

He could hear someone (Morrel, maybe?) screaming for a doctor when he opened his eyes and saw the stairwell stretching upwards in front of him. What had his own betrothal been like? It had disappeared from his memory; it was merely a blip in time compared to Edmond’s. He advanced a step. 

It was pouring rain the day Fernand proposed. Louis Dantès was not yet cold in the ground, and Mercédès’ home felt just as lifeless and despondent as the dirt covering his head. Fernand did not mind the deathly atmosphere, regardless of how Mercédès’ state of distress pained him, because he knew what this meant for him. He was done shirking _opportunity_. 

His knee pressed harshly against the cold floor, and for a moment, he was gripped with the fear that she would spurn him again, as she had time and time before—but she had done so with lessening intensity, and surely that was a sign in his favor, wasn’t it? He wished he could hear her breathing, or that he could see her mouth through her hand, anything to show him that his anxieties were unwarranted and the confidence that he had been gaining since Edmond’s arrest was to the contrary—yet all he could hear was the rain drumming against the roof.

When Mercédès dropped her hand and her lips finally moved, it was like something out of a dream—vague, bright, overwhelmingly hopeful. The satisfaction tasted like ink and saltwater.

She did not love him, he realized suddenly. She loved him like a brother, she had claimed before, and that had not been enough for him, but would even that survive his designs? He could marry her and have a child with her and spend years of his life building a name for them—but he would do it with gloved hands, and when the gloves were yanked from him she would find his hands soaked in blood. What after that? She would leave him and she would not look back, and would he be able to blame her?

Fernand stood up and, with one last look to his prize, left. She did not react; she might as well have not existed at all, for there was not a noise or a movement from the small house once he was outside it. He tossed his head, shaking off raindrops, and began walking down the slope.

By the time he reached the shore, he had to keep his hand to his forehead just to stop the growing rainfall from blinding him. The surface of the ocean was a fury of gray, dark and tumultuous like the waters of Hell, and sand was sticking to his legs. The smell of salt filled his lungs, the smell of fish—dead fish, day in and day out, over and over again. If he had stayed with the fish, perhaps everything could have been avoided. It was too late now to return to that line of _work_ , but— 

The waves clawed at his ankles, almost strong enough to throw him to the sand, and he could hardly see the shore beneath his soles even at this depth. Still, Fernand pressed on, and his feet became heavier and heavier the further he descended until the waves could not topple him at all. 

His head entered under the waves. The saltwater stung his eyes and filled his nose and his mouth and something inside his chest was screaming at him to STOP IT STOP IT RETREAT WHILE YOU CAN and water filled his lungs. He could not breathe. _He could not breathe._

Fernand ascended several paces up the stairs. Had the air always felt so stale in this house? Had it died with everything else when Mercédès and their son departed? Inhaling had become a struggle, and he was not sure why; it seemed that the past few hours, the past few infinities, had aged him.

The Frenchman across from him remained silent as Fernand leaned over the table, palms sweating and lips whispering some secrets from the Spanish army that, even as they left his mouth, he could not remember. The Frenchmen fixed him with a look that said, _“Little Catalan, you will never be one of us, no matter whose blood you dirty your hands with. We might let you play the part for a while, that is all.”_

That was a look that Fernand could not argue with—he could not argue with the truth. He picked the pen off the table and located his radial artery (when did he learn what that was? he couldn’t remember.) He jabbed the pen down into his skin where the artery bulged uncomfortably, and his vision went red.

Another step—two, three. Fernand continued upwards, exhausted, to his doom just like all those faceless soldiers who had been less lucky and less treacherous than him.

It was the eve of Waterloo, and all Fernand knew was that he would not die like a dog for another man’s political designs, no matter how glorious. None of it meant anything. _None of it meant anything._ Was that right, really? No—he could die on the battlefield and preserve his honor, or he could retreat with his life only to dirty his name years later for nothing. He still had his gun—he still had his bayonet. The blade pressed impossibly to his chest and Fernand plunged it inwards. When it touched his heart, he saw stars. 

He was almost at the top of the stairwell. He was _so close_.

Ali Pasha was dead.

The room was dark and the gold heavy in his hands—oh, but this was only a fraction of the benefits he would reap from this trade. When all his wealth was collected, the weight of it alone would surely be enough to force him to the ground. The thing he had to trade for that wealth, after all, was one of great value.

That thing was Ali Pasha’s daughter—Haydée, he believed her name was, although it hardly mattered. She was young and healthy, with olive skin and dark hair and a face he had never looked at long enough to commit to memory. Whatever her physical attributes, it was her status as the daughter of such an important man that was of real worth. The results of this trade, of course, were only pleasant byproducts of Fernand’s true designs for reputation, for glory in his exploits abroad, but he could savor his good fortune. He had earned that much.

It was when his business partner began to lead his newest asset out of the room that the girl turned to look at him, and by the time Fernand realized they were making eye contact it was too late to turn away. He would have expected to see confusion or fear there (and he would have forced it out of his mind, because it was none of his concern what became of her), but that was not what Fernand found himself facing.

Contempt. Not hatred, the way a servant might hate a particularly cruel master, but contempt. Haydée, daughter of Ali Pasha, looked at him like a prison guard would look at an argumentative prisoner, and Fernand felt a shiver go down his spine. His mouth was filled with the taste of bitter fear, and it was shameful, in a way, to be so terrified of an enslaved child, but some instinct fighting for domain within him was screaming that this was the end; he had been outclassed.

A sneer twisted across the girl’s lips, as if she could smell his fear and lavished in it. A single, frail finger pointed toward him accusingly.

“Fernand Mondego,” Haydée said in a voice not at all child-like, “never has a man existed, in my country or yours, with such futile and cowardly pursuits.”

He tried to step back and found his feet rooted to the spot. The girl remained still, grinning, eyes boring holes through him, when the man beside her turned back toward him and placed a hand on her shoulder. 

“There is nothing left for you, here or anywhere,” Edmond Dantès told him, and his voice filled the room like cold water. “The only things you ever possessed were those you stole, and they were never truly yours. The only option that remains for you is to retreat to that place where material things have no meaning.”

Fernand staggered towards the wall, opening his mouth and struggling to scream. His voice escaped him and it was then, in the midst of his strife, that he found the muzzle of a gun in his mouth.

Dim sunlight was streaming into his bedroom—only _his_ bedroom. Fernand Mondego was seated on the chair nearest the window, sweaty and uncomfortable; at some point, he had wet his pants. Something inside him was like a cornered animal, desperate to lash out and escape; the rest had its tail between its legs. Edmond, or Haydée, or whoever it was, had been right—there was nothing left for him, nothing left _in_ him. 

His finger trembled, clammy and pale, against the slender piece of metal pressed against it.

Where had Mercédès gone? What of Albert? They were everywhere and nowhere. Perhaps someday he would welcome them into the afterlife, but Fernand suspected, despairingly, that they would reject the merest sight of him. Tears pricked at his eyes and he found himself giving a low, pained moan. His chest hurt terribly; his head had filled with darkness. Even the fear and humiliation had fled from his grasp, leaving him with nothing but the damning knowledge that it was over. His tongue pressed against cold metal. He was alone.

Fernand Mondego gave a final noise—not a sob, not a scream, but the whimper of a dying animal with no strength left to fight. The explosion sounded out into the city and blood splattered over the chair cushion.

**Author's Note:**

> the title is inspired by variations on the death of trotsky, a 1992 one act play by david ives. it's pretty rad and i suggest checking it out, especially if you ever have the opportunity to see it performed live!
> 
> https://gaspardcaderousse.tumblr.com/


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